As we enter the harsh winter, bunches of red, shiny, sweet and sour ice gourds appear on the streets of Beijing again, making people’s eyes delightful and mouth-watering. Ice gourd is a representative of the traditional Chinese cuisine, now using more and more raw materials, such as hawthorn, yam, yam beans, black dates, bean paste, grapes, strawberries, kiwi fruit, sage fruit, etc., which is the most common also count hawthorn and yam. When making, the fruit skewered with bamboo skewers, dipped in sugar boiled with icing sugar, sugar solidified in the cold, wrapped in the fruit outside, as the winter ice, ice hanging general, the sunlight crystal clear, hooked appetite. Ice gourd sweet and sour, a bite of crunchy, chewy gobble, from the outside to the inside of a cool, crisp, sweet, sour, soft taste. As sung by Feng Xiaoquan in “Ice Sugar Gourd”: “They say ice sugar gourd child sour, sour inside it wrapped in sweet; they say ice sugar gourd child sweet, but sweet inside it through the sour”. Not only that ice sugar gourd also has a very good therapeutic effect on health, said this also from the origin of ice sugar gourd. It is said that the Southern Song Dynasty Guangzong Shaoxi years, the emperor’s favorite Huang Guifei yellow muscle thin, do not think about eating, emaciated day by day, and the imperial doctors and helpless, the emperor had to list for medical. A charlatan came to the palace and made a decoction of rock sugar and hawthorn for the princess to eat five to ten pieces before each meal. Later, this practice spread to the people, the people and it is strung up to sell, it became the ice sugar gourd. This is actually nothing unusual, because hawthorn and sugar itself is a very good medicinal material. Hawthorn, a deciduous shrub or small tree of the Rosaceae family wild hawthorn or the mature fruit of hawthorn, sour, sweet, slightly warm. It has the effect of eliminating food stagnation, breaking gas and dispersing stasis, stopping diarrhea and dysentery, etc. Since ancient times, it has been an important medicine for eliminating food stagnation, especially good at eliminating fishy and greasy, meat stagnation, Li Shizhen quoted from the “Things of the Phase Sensation” that “cooking old chicken hard meat, into the hawthorn a few that is easy to rot, then its function of eliminating meat stagnation, cover can be pushed. I remember when I was in college, a few students went out to eat buffet shabu-shabu, always prepare some sugar gourd or hawthorn cake to eliminate food, that is the reason. I think that Huang Guifei 80% is the day delicacies, food and seafood, so that the food accumulation, and hawthorn is the right remedy. The ice sugar, for the white sand sugar decoction made of ice crystals, taste sweet, flat, non-toxic, into the spleen, lung two meridians, has a spleen and stomach, nourishing yin, moisten the lungs and cough function, can treat the spleen and stomach gas deficiency, lung dry cough, phlegm with blood and other evidence. Therefore, Huang Guifei had food accumulation, weak spleen and stomach, and did not think about eating, so she used rock sugar to strengthen the spleen and stomach, nourish yin and produce fluids, and tonify her body. It is easy to see from this story: Huang Guifei has internal stagnation, external deficiency like, is “big real with wonky” evidence, but I expect the imperial doctors to protect themselves, do not dare to cast nitrate, yellow, hedgehog, park and other tigers and wolves of the medicine. The hawthorn and sugar, only two flavors of medicine, but the combination is exquisite, a consumption of a tonic, elimination does not hurt the positive, not congestion, slow figure of the effect is obvious, is effective and safe method. This extends to the hawthorn sugar gourd is a health care product, especially in the winter season, people more wine meat tonic, inevitably food accumulation within the birth, often eat hawthorn ice sugar gourd can eliminate food accumulation, the flow of gas guide stagnation; and winter climate is dry, wine and meat spicy depletion of yin, hawthorn and ice sugar acid sweet Yin, is in line with the “spring and summer Yang, autumn and winter Yin The “training”; hawthorn has the function of breaking gas and dispersing blood stasis, so gas stagnation and blood stasis of dysmenorrhea, postpartum dew, hernia and other evidence, can also often eat hawthorn sugar gourd; not only that, modern research hawthorn also has a good blood pressure, lipid-lowering effect, so long-term consumption has the effect of preventing hypertension, hyperlipidemia, coronary heart disease. And again, yam iced sugar gourd, it also has a very good dietary therapy health effects. Yam, ancient name Dioscorea, yam, for the Dioscorea family perennial herb Dioscorea dried tuber, to Henan Boai, Qingyang, Wuzhi, Wenxian and other places (ancient Huaiqing belongs to) produced by the most authentic, customary name “Huai yam”. It is sweet and flat in nature, and belongs to the spleen, lung and kidney meridians. It benefits the qi and nourishes the yin, nourishes the spleen, lung and kidney, astringent essence and stops the belt, and is mainly used to treat spleen deficiency diarrhea, less food and body fatigue, lung deficiency cough and asthma, kidney deficiency spermatorrhea, frequent urination, internal heat and thirst. Yam has a very good tonic effect, and is taking into account the three organs of the lung, spleen and kidney, can nourish the lung and kidney yin, and can benefit the spleen and lung qi, so the ancient books have “cure all the deficiencies of a hundred losses, cure the five strains of seven injuries” said. Whether for the spleen and stomach weakness caused by diarrhea, indigestion, women leucorrhea, mental lethargy, etc.; or kidney deficiency of the seal is not solid and caused by spermatorrhea, frequent urination, etc.; or lung deficiency or lung and kidney deficiency and caused by the long asthma and cough, have a very good treatment and prevention effect. And yam plus sugar made into sugar gourd to add its therapeutic effect, especially to stop cough and diarrhea is most obvious, specifically in autumn and winter, dry climate, dry heat penal gold, lung yin deficiency, lung loss of publicity, often dry cough without phlegm evidence, and often prolonged for a long time, repeatedly does not heal, often eat yam plus sugar, just can moisten the lungs and nourish yin, cultivate the earth to produce gold and stop cough; then there is a weak spleen qi people, often easy diarrhea, especially emotional Tension, liver offense spleen, more likely to attack, and eat a yam candy cane every day, just to help the earth to suppress wood, spleen to stop diarrhea. But it should also be pointed out that, although the sugar gourd is good, but not everyone is suitable for long-term consumption. First of all, because it contains icing sugar, so diabetic patients to moderate. In addition, the “herbal preparation”: “(hawthorn) eat more people are noisy and easy to hunger, but cut the spleen and stomach vitality”, so the spleen and stomach weakness, acid heartburn people, should not eat too much hawthorn sugar gourd. And yam nourishes yin can help astringent, so wet or full and stagnant people should not eat long-term. Of course if you can pair yam and hawthorn, one to eliminate food, one to strengthen the spleen, the side effects may be greatly reduced. In short, ice sugar gourd is not only delicious, there is a very high therapeutic effect on health, but also as the song “ice sugar gourd” sung “(eat it) gas is also smooth that heart is also wide, you will be twenty years younger; eat it to cure disease and relieve cravings, you will be twenty years younger”. May the small sugar gourd can bring sweetness and health to people.